Tanaka Tokuzo 1920-2007

[Aaron Gerow]

> Has anyone else noted that this director of chanbara died on  
> December 20th? I actually haven't seen all that many of his films,  
> so won't endeavour to write an appreciation of him myself - could  
> someone more familiar with his oeuvre than I am do the honours?

Thanks to Alex for mentioning this. I missed it in the end of  
semester/pre-Christmas rush.

I actually saw Tanaka in 2006 at the Mizoguchi Symposium, which has  
now been put together in book form. He was quite lively and  
entertaining, and reminded me of the vigor of his own films.

He started out at Daiei working as an AD for Kurosawa (Rashomon) and  
Mizoguchi (Ugetsu, Chikamatsu monogatari) before earning his  
directorial debut in 1958. He is in some ways a director from my  
youth, because I spent a year going to see the jidaigeki triple  
features at the Thalia in NYC when I was at Columbia. Most of the  
films were from Daiei, so Tanaka was a name I remembered from all  
those Nemuri Kyoshiro and Zatoichi films I saw. While Misumi Kenji  
was the most famous of the Daiai jidaigeki directors, it was Tanaka  
and Ikehiro Kazuo who formed the journeyman core. After Daiei went  
under, Tanaka continued to work in TV and thus I saw his name there a  
lot too.

According to the news reports, his last film project was helping  
direct Shonen Kochi ondotori monogatari, a 35 minute entry in  
Yoshimoto's Directors 100, which features 100 films made by Yoshimoto  
Kogyo tarento. A trailer can be seen at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAyq5wl1fkY

Tanaka was genki enough to attend screenings of the film in November.


Aaron Gerow
KineJapan owner

Assistant Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Yale University

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